Soldiers Pay by William Faulkner Read Free Book Online Page A

his terrible face. (I am Julian Lowe, I eat, I digest, evacuate: I have flown. This man . . . this man here, sleeping beneath his scar. . . . Where do we touch? O God, O God: knowing his own body, his stomach.)
    Raising his hand he felt his own undamaged brow. No scar there. Near him upon a chair was his hat severed by a white band, upon the table the other man’s cap with its cloth crown sloping backward from a bronze initialed crest.
    He tasted his sour mouth, knowing his troubled stomach. To have been him! he moaned. Just to be him. Let him take this sound body of mine! Let him take it. To have got wings on my breast, to have wings; and to have got his scar, too, I would take death tomorrow. Upon a chair Mahon’s tunic evinced above the left breast pocket wings breaking from an initialed circle beneath a crown, tipping downward in an arrested embroidered sweep; a symbolized desire.
    To be him, to have gotten wings, but to have got his scar, too! Cadet Lowe turned to the wall with passionate disappointment like a gnawing fox at his vitals. Slobbering and moaning Cadet Lowe, too, dreamed again, sleeping.
    V
    Achilles—What preparation would you make for a cross-country flight, Cadet?
    Mercury—Empty your bladder and fill your petrol tank, Sir.
    Achilles—Carry on, Cadet.
    â€”Old Play (About 19—?)
    Cadet Lowe, waking, remarked morning, and Gilligan entering the room, dressed. Gilligan looking at him said:
    â€œHow you coming, ace?”
    Mahon yet slept beneath his scar, upon a chair his tunic. Above the left pocket, wings swept silkenly, breaking downward above a ribbon. White, purple, white.
    â€œOh, God!” Lowe groaned.
    Gilligan with the assurance of physical well-being stood in brisk arrested motion.
    â€œAs you were, fellow. I’m going out and have some breakfast sent up. You stay here until Loot wakes, huh?”
    Cadet Lowe tasting his sour mouth groaned again. Gilligan regarded him. “Oh, you’ll stay all right, won’t you? I’ll be back soon.”
    The door closed after him and Lowe, thinking of water, rose and took his wavering way across the room to a water pitcher. Carafe. Like giraffe or like cafe? he wondered. The water was good, but lowering the vessel he felt immediately sick. After a while he recaptured the bed.
    He dozed, forgetting his stomach, and remembering it he dreamed and waked. He could feel his head like a dull inflation, then he could distinguish the foot of his bed and thinking again of water he turned on a pillow and saw another identical bed and the suave indication of a dressing-gown motionless beside it. Leaning over Mahon’s scarred supineness, she said: “Don’t get up.”
    Lowe said, I won’t, closing his eyes, tasting his mouth, seeing her long slim body against his red eyelids, opening his eyes to light and her thigh shaped and falling away into an impersonal fabric. With an effort he might have seen her ankles. Her feet will be there, he. thought, unable to accomplish the effort and behind his closed eyes be thought of saying something which would leave his mouth on hers. Oh, God, he thought, feeling that no one had been so sick, imagining that she would say I love you, too. If I had wings, and a scar. . . . To hell with officers, he thought, sleeping again:
    To hell with kee-wees, anyway. I wouldn’t be a goddam kee-wee. Rather be a sergeant. Rather be a mechanic. Crack up, Cadet. Hell, yes, Why not? War’s over. Glad. Glad. Oh, God. His scar: his wings. Last time.
    He was briefly in a Jenny again, conscious of lubricating oil and a slow gracious restraint of braced plane surfaces, feeling an air blast and feeling the stick in his hand, watching bobbing rocker arms on the horizon, laying her nose on the horizon like a sighted rifle. Christ, what do I care? seeing her nose rise until the horizon was hidden, seeing the arc of a descending wing expose it again, seeing her become abruptly stationary while